Libby Lake recovering after shootings

Oceanside teens restart mentoring program

OCEANSIDE  Once a week, at a site overlooking Libby Lake Park in Oceanside, a handful of elementary school children meet with a group of teens. They talk about video games, pop icons and dream jobs.

The significance of these chats, part of a small, newly rejuvenated after-school program in the neighborhood, is probably over the heads of the 9- and 10-year-olds.

The teens are there to mentor, so the younger kids growing up in the tough neighborhood stay out of trouble.

“We give them guidance. Some of these kids need guidance,” said mentor David Garcia, who this year survived one of the worst gang shootings in recent city history.

Sunday marked seven months since the ambush that killed two teens and injured Garcia, 18, and another teenager at the park. It was the second gang-related fatal shooting of teens in the park since 2011.

Since the most recent attack, the city has installed more lights at the park, and police stepped up patrols. Neighbors still avoid the place at night, but about 300 people turned out for a city-hosted movie night there this month.

And last month, about 15 neighborhood teens decided it was time to restart the after-school program to mentor children at Libby Elementary. The school’s athletic field sits about 20 feet from the site of the shootings.

The teens are part of Project REACH, run through the Vista Community Clinic. A few weeks ago, they restarted STEP UP, the program to mentor about 20 fourth- and fifth-graders.

“The high school kids understand that if they want to see change in their community, it’s going to start with them,” said Jimmy Figueroa, Project Reach coordinator.

The mentoring program stopped earlier this year, in part because the shootings left a heightened fear of the park.

Garcia had been a part of Project REACH since he was 12 but drifted away last year. Then came the attack. He was shot seven times, including once in the head. The El Camino High School senior has since rejoined the group.

“We are trying to teach kids not to be with the wrong people, and to make the right decisions,” Garcia said Tuesday, as a weekly mentoring session wrapped up.

The fatal teen shootings at Libby Lake Park in 2011 and this year stunned the community.

“The crimes were significant,” said Lt. Valencia Saadat, a veteran Oceanside police officer. “These were young kids. It sent shock waves.”

On the night of May 3, 2011, two teens were ambushed and killed as they sat on a hilltop at the park. Three suspected gang members were charged with murder, and one faces the death penalty.

Then this year, on March 13, while at a makeshift memorial in the park for the teens slain two years ago, Garcia and his friends were shot, two mortally.

Five suspected gang members were charged in the killings. Their preliminary hearing is set for January.

Saadat said police continue to work with neighborhood and faith-based groups associated with the park. She praised Garcia and the mentoring program, and said the high turnout for the recent movie night “speaks volumes” about the community’s attempts to clean up the park.

Crimes still happen in and around the park. From May through September, police took reports of nine violent crimes — aggravated assaults, robberies and the like. During the same months in 2012, there were 10.

In the aftermath of the March incident, Oceanside spent about $20,000 on safety improvements at the park, including adding lights and removing trees that had blocked easy view of the shooting area.

The City Council gave Project REACH in Libby Lake $80,000 to keep it running through the middle of next year and put $41,000 into other programs to benefit children in the area.

The mentoring program is not specifically funded, Figueroa said, but “we have the most important thing. We have the students who want to do it. And the younger kids are looking up to them.”